Return of the gulls: City hopes pesky birds find new home

The City of Sheboygan hopes that its efforts to relocate the seagulls from downtown Sheboygan eventually works.
Produced by Gary C. Klein/Sheboygan Press Media

Downtown Sheboygan works to control seagull population.

Buy Photo

Greatlakes Avian Pest Control's Jeff Schukow stands next to his patented seagull control unit in downtown Sheboygan. The unit stays in an enclosure and comes out on an hourly basis to scare away seagulls. Go online to sheboyganpress.com to see more photos and a video of the decoy in action.(Photo: Gary C. Klein/Sheboygan Press Media)Buy Photo

If you've passed by the former Boston Store site downtown, you may have caught a glimpse of some extra activity between the bulldozers and construction workers.

About 2 minutes past each hour, a small stand in the middle of the now-leveled field springs to life. Out of the metal enclosure comes a fierce avian predator that swoops over the area in a circle while letting out a piercing shriek designed to strike fear into the heart of its prey.

OK, so it's a solar-powered decoy bird with sound effects on a tether that swings around every hour. That little display may seem silly to humans, but seagulls take it seriously. And that's the point, says Jeff Schukow, who designed the setup to prevent the gulls from returning to the area.

"The goal of this program is just to make sure they don't get reestablished downtown," Schukow said. "It's just that they were born there, they automatically come back to reestablish themselves."

Seagulls have long disrupted business in the downtown Sheboygan area, at times painting Blue Harbor's roof a distinctive coating of white. Harbor Centre BID District Manager Dave Hoffman said last year's experience was especially problematic, with the gulls leaving detritus around the Weill Center and Black Pig restaurant and making an unsightly mess around the Boston Store.

The problem was that the seagulls had established a large nesting area on the Boston Store roof — having laid about 1,000 eggs there. While city officials and the fire department got a permit from the DNR to go onto the roof and crush the eggs, they found themselves bewildered once they arrived to take care of business.

"We went up there with clickers to be able to count how many eggs we crushed as we went along," said City Planning and Development Director Chad Pelishek said. "Then, we got up there and most of it was gone. I think we counted about five eggs that we crushed."

Hoffman said the roof may have been cleared by a storm. The seagulls have established a few places in the downtown area — including on roofs near the Sheboygan Press building — but with other businesses having established decoys and wire to keep them off, Hoffman said there haven't been many complaints about seagulls in the area.

Schukow is trying to keep it that way. He's noted that other decoys set up on rooftops in the area will work for a while, but if the bird is exposed, the seagulls will test the waters and slowly, but surely, become acclimated to the decoy when they realize it isn't going to attack.

His device — which he said saves money because of its relative simplicty and solar power source — hides the bird from view when it's not active so birds are always kept on edge by the faux predator.

In addition to the device set up on the former Boston Store grounds, he has been hired by other surrounding businesses to keep seagulls off their buildings as well. He notes this isn't the natural habitat for the gulls, who have been looking for a place to move their colony since development took over some of their existing space at the South Pier area.

The best-case scenario, he hopes, is to move the seagulls to a new colony spot outside of the downtown area. He points to one possible location just north of the Pigeon River. He said that area would have to be cleared of underbrush but that it could serve as a more suitable alternative for the birds than trying to survive on downtown rooftops.

"For birds to be hatched out on top of buildings is really a terrible way to live," Schukow said. "They stay up in the sun all day, there's no way for them to get the water, it's just not good for the birds."